My World Just Got a Little Smarter

My mom and I recently switched to Sprint and are now using our very first smart phones. Our device of choice was the HTC Evo Design. The Evo 3D is supposed to be a better device, but one of the reasons for that is its larger size, and that's more of a drawback for me. Also, I just don't care for the 3D feature at all. So we went with its less expensive little brother, the Design.

The Transfer
We transferred from another network, and we ordered the phones online. So we had to wait for the phones to be delivered, then wait even longer for our own phones to lose service so we could power on the new ones. For me, this happened at 11:30 Wednesday night. I was still texting a couple people, so I felt obligated to switch over to the new phone, but I also had an appointment in the morning and didn't want to stay up too late. Oh well. Sleep usually loses in these situations.

For me, the transfer was clean, sudden, and obvious. My old phone no longer had any bars and no longer said "AT&T" at the top of the screen. My mom's phone wasn't as nice to her. She was still making receiving calls on her old phone, but text messages wouldn't go through. Finally, around 12 hours after I had activated my phone, Dad called me to say Mom's phone wasn't working. When he called her number, he was redirected to a Sprint voice mailbox. It was time to make the switch.

Even then, though, Mom's transfer wasn't quite as clean as mine. This morning, her old phone received a text my dad had sent. I don't know what's going on with the whole thing.

And I was dumb enough not to have saved my contacts onto my SIM card, so the guys at Sprint couldn't transfer them. Guess I have to do it manually. Yay.

My Favorite Features so Far
1) Apps
One of the first things I did after basic setup was download an alarm clock app. Sure, the phone has one built in. But I didn't see a "Vibrate Only" option, and that's what I really wanted. So I downloaded an app that did provide that. Today I downloaded an app that monitors my battery life by percentage, because the bar just wasn't accurate enough. Overall, what I like most about apps is if my phone doesn't do something I want it to do, I can probably make it do that just by looking for the right app. Also, I think I like the Android market. It's easy enough to use.

2) Texting
One feature I've been looking forward to for a while now is text messages stored in conversation threads, rather than an inbox and a sent box. Now if I forget what I said last (which I do surprisingly often) all I have to do is look up. Because switching back and forth between inbox and sent box got old pretty fast.

Another feature I really like, but wasn't expecting to be so crazy about, is the vertical qwerty keyboard. On my old phone, if I held the phone vertical, it gave me a numerical keyboard like the one I used for dialing. This one, like many others, gives me a smaller version of the qwerty keyboard. I used to just think this would be annoying, that the letters looked too close together, etc. But holy cow. I love this thing. It is so much more convenient than I expected. I can text with one hand!

And the last cool texting feature: Auto-correct. Yes, it's annoying sometimes. Yes, it can get in the habit of correcting to things I don't want to say. Yes, I have to teach it some "words." But that's actually easier than I expected. And mostly it helps more than it hinders, and I use the backspace key a lot less than before. So Auto-correct is my friend.

3) Front-Facing Camera
This is an excellent tool for anyone in a long-distance relationship. Enough said.

I could ramble more...
But I won't. This post has gone on long enough, and you need to get back to your life. I just wanted to share the newest exciting addition to my life. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the world of Zelda

The Zelda video game series is one I've been casually wishing to play for maybe a few years now. By "casually wishing" I mean I decided I'd have to try it out someday, but I wouldn't go out of my way. I wouldn't buy any of the games before trying my hand at one, and I wouldn't even beg a friend to borrow their copy. But if the opportunity fell into my lap, I wouldn't hesitate to give these games a whirl. Just recently, an opportunity fell into my lap. Due to circumstances I don't want to explain fully, involving a borrowed game that was never returned, a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition ended up at my house a while ago. I found out about this yesterday and was pretty excited. This disc includes some of the earlier games, including the one for the NES that I assume is the original. Don't ask me; I just got into this stuff today.

Anyway, I decided to start at what I assume to be the beginning, because it just seemed right. And let me tell you, ouch. I played for over an hour before I had any clue what to do, and that was a mistake. The whole time I was trying to figure out where to go to get to the next stage of the game. Well, I had the wrong idea...

 This is called the Overworld. There are nine dungeons to be found here, which have their own maps, but basically this right here is the whole game. And I was trying to get off of it. So much frustration resulted. Honestly, if I hadn't searched the internet and found a map like this, I would have given up on the game and counted myself a loser. Thank you, internet.

But my lack of an idea for the objective of this game was not my only problem. This is one of those games in which the player starts out with just three hearts as a health bar and can gain hearts later (so far I think I have five) but no matter how many hearts your max health is at, you restart after every death with only three hearts. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it wasn't for the fact that, when your health is full, you can throw your sword at enemies. Now, I'm a sucker for a good ranged attack, so the whole three-hearts-to-start-with thing really ticked me off once I worked myself up to five. How was I supposed to refill my health when I'm useless without a ranged attack?

Simple: use the bow, silly. So the bow can be found in a secret chamber in the first dungeon, and I missed that memo the first time around. Then when I got there and couldn't figure out how to equip the bow, because of course you have to buy arrows first. And apparently every time you shoot an arrow it costs one rupy (Zelda's unit for money, if you're not familiar), but I still think it might be worth it. With finally a reliable ranged attack, I might have a fighting chance with this game.

So far, The Legend of Zelda has been little more than a huge and frustrating waste of time for me. However, I still see a lot of potential for this game. I'm determined to see if I can finish this game, and then I'll move onto the others. Legend of Zelda, I accept your challenge!